Action Figure Daniel

Category: Work

  • Metrics time!

    Our office has recently been on a metrics kick. It seems that we feel like we are not cool enough so we thought we would start reporting data in order to determine where we can improve.

    I hate metrics. Well, most of them at least.

    Generally they are numbers that are produced periodically in order to help management feel like they are managing (if only because they have summarized work into standardized outputs that can be tracked over time; this is data collection and is good but is often mistaken as metrics too). In the end though, the reports are often neglected, leaves the reporting teams with extra work and often causes the teams to drift into managing the metrics instead of managing their business.

    Ultimately, it seems like metrics seem like a distraction from addressing the real, underlying question. This question, the one that is under all the metrics, is usually “How is the business doing?” The answer to this question changes depending on the person being asked (assuming each person manages a different facet of the business) and also changes based on the current context, something metrics are not good at measuring because part of the point of having metrics is to have something consistent to compare performance against over time.

    Consider metrics about payroll. Metric ratios could be calculated based on pay versus hours logged in a system, communications handled or number of handshakes. All of these metrics would probably be trying to answer a question about whether the staff is worth their pay, but in a polite way. Before establishing any of these metrics, one should determine if any of these really matter, if they are actually reflective and indicative of the underlying question.

    A good way to know if you are measuring the right things in your metrics is to ask, “Inherently, if this number goes up, does the business improve?” In asking this question it is important to explore the ‘inherent’ context to make sure there are few, if any, underlying assumptions. In order for a metric to be good, it needs to be a number that correlates well with the desired results. In other words, you need to make sure that the metrics cannot be boosted without the business being boosted as well. Otherwise you are probably wasting resources chasing pointless numbers.

    Consider a pay versus handshakes ratio metric. The assumption is that more handshakes bring more value and thus makes an employee more profitable to the company and more deserving of their paycheck. Now we can ask our test question from above: “Inherently, if the [number of handshakes an employee performs] goes up, does the business improve?” The quick answer is ‘no’. It is very easy to envision situations where a person could dramatically increase their daily handshakes by shaking hands with everyone they see. All the extra handshakes would boost the metric but are unlikely to result in a corollary boost in business.

    All of this leads me to say, companies should gather and track data over time, that is how meaning can be found in trends and the impact of changes measured. However, collecting data should never be confused with metrics to hold employees accountable to, especially when that data is laden with false assumptions about correlation.

    Improving metrics is not the same as improving business.

  • “Never come in early” and other workplace fallacies

    “Never come in early,” said the middle aged man. He was giving advice for my working life. This was my first job and he was sort of a friend/mentor (I was too young to know these things).

    “Never stay late,” was his other maxim. “That’s how they get you,” was his reasoning. “They start asking you to come in earlier and earlier and they make you stay later and later. All without paying you a dime more.”

    In hindsight I hear his words with some embitterment that probably came from a long exposure to corporate abuse.

    While not really purposeful, I generally followed his advice. I never planned to come in early (more than 15 minutes before my shift was scheduled) and never planned to stay late, unless there was due compensation agreed on beforehand.

    As I have worked through the years, and have matured, I have noticed that many people hold this mentality and many companies (regardless of their stated workplace environment policies) foster a place that reinforces this behavior. The mantra from both sides: “Do your job, keep your head down, attract as little attention as possible.”

    Many people like to think they are bold, open and engaging, they are not really. Employees are frequently encouraged to be social and interactive with open employees but many attempts to learn about other peoples’ work are viewed as territorial challenges and are frequently met with subversive hostility and mistrust. “Why are you trying to learn my job?” is a common question. And a fair question. Many companies send unsuspecting individuals in to learn someones job for “redundancies” and “in case they ever go on vacation” then promptly learn off the teacher and replace them with the learner (who is often paid less).

    While many companies say they want their employees to be happy and engaged in the workplace, they maintain strict policies of strong management oversight of minutia, accountability over trivial details and dysfunctional behavior towards those who reach outside their ordained silo.

    Another issue is that many companies, and some employees, are old and have a long history. This means that there are many, many layers of politics and more delicate boats that cannot be rocked than can be found in the most intense daytime soap.

    In hindsight, the saddest places I have worked were the ones that were deserted after 5pm. The places where no one wanted to stay a minute longer than they were supposed. Places where both the employees and the company were just putting in the hours.

    In connection with my opening quote, I have realized that I never want to work for such a place where people flee the scene at the end of the work day.

    Instead, I want to work at a place that I want to come in early and leave late every night; where the people are so engaging that I count working as “hanging out”; where the work is so interesting that I can hardly call it “work”; where the company is so open that I feel like I can roam free without judgment; where I can learn about other people’s jobs with interest and not be scorned for territorial challenges; where big picture thinking is encouraged, not just in words but in action; where my manager is transparent and open.

    So, no more with “just putting in my time.” If time and money are they only things that get exchanged then the work is not worth either my time or my employers money.
    As I think about this, such a workplace requires effort from all the involved parties. Companies have to create an environment of trust where employees can appropriately share information freely without feeling like they need to keep secrets in order to keep their jobs. Employees need to be able to find their work interesting and engaging. This usually requires at least some perspective (many of the most boring tasks I have ever done at work were agreeable because I knew that my contribution was making an impact–not because I was told such but because I knew the big picture). Employee then need to act in this open environment. Being free is pointless if that freedom is not utilized.
    The cool part is that the companies that have open environments that employees utilize effectively are the companies that scare the pants off their competitors because those companies are the fastest, most agile and most prone to have a surprise that no one saw coming.

  • Why you should not try to catch the IT guy

    The tawny haired man stumbled through the door, just missing the aluminum frame of the glass door as it pulled open. He dragged a foot as he made his way to the reception desk, all the while clutching at his chest.

    “Can I help you?” The receptionist asked in a cool tone. The man looked put generally well put together and in no need of hospital services.

    “I need help,” the man said in a distant voice.

    She looked him over. His suit was well pressed, lint free and his lavender shirt had a large stain running down it but was otherwise in good condition. There was a bit of a tear near the top of the stain. She froze. It was not a stain but blood running down his shirt.

    “Wha… what happened to you?”

    “I need help,” he repeated then collapsed on the floor.

    The receptionist switched into auto-pilot mode and swooped to his side.

    “Here,” she said grabbing his hand and pushing it to his wound. “Keep pushing here.”

    “I need help,” the man uttered again, though he complied with the order.

    The woman scanned the hallway for a moment before locking eyes with a doctor. “Probably the closest one,” he thought before calling out. “Doctor, here, now!”

    The doctor grabbed his pockets to keep them stable then began jogging. He scanned the scene before him: the receptionist pressing the man’s hand to his chest, the man himself covered in blood and barely conscious of what was happening. A hand grabbed the doctor’s his arm and broke his focus. He skidded to a halt.

    “Doctor,” an old, frail man said. “When can I expect my results back?”

    The doctor stared into the old man’s eyes in disbelief.

    “Um, I don’t know.” He muttered. “I have to help the man in the lobby.”

    “But I’ve been waiting.”

    “Are you dying?”

    “Well, no, but I want my test results.”

    “Mr. Jones,” the doctor said firmly while detaching himself from the man’s arm. “There is man in the lobby who will die if I don’t help him right now.”

    “Now see here young man,” the old man started angrily. “I have given this hospital a small fortune in my time. They’ve even named a wing after me. I am entitled to better service than this.”

    His angry words were wasted though, the doctor was already down the hallway working on the stab wound.

    —

    While most reasons for an IT worker to visit onsite do not involve keeping humans alive, they do in many ways involve keeping the business alive. Few people would behave as Mr. Jones when human life is involved however, countless are even more indignant when the business life is on the line.

    To fully understand what it means when an IT worker walks onsite to fix an issue let me share a bit about how most IT people like to work: by remote.

    One of the most potent blessings of the modern era is remote control. Today’s technologies allow for an IT worker to remote almost anything. Computers, servers, phones, cellphones, printers, copiers, fax machine and just about everything else in a business. At first glance, it may seem that working via remote is the lazy route, and it is, to an extent.

    Working by remote means that issues can be corrected from the comfort of a desk. More importantly, it means that IT persons can stay highly efficient. Many location are physically large spaces. If workers had to walk to each computer to run an update or make a change, something that would take 2 minutes by remote suddenly takes all day to complete. But the real kicker comes when there is a problem.

    Contrary to popular belief, most IT people do not have endless stores of solutions to every conceivable technical problem stashed in their heads. Much like doctors, we store a collection of the most frequent and reasonable scenarios and leave the rest to our resources to remember. For doctors those resources include textbooks, encyclopedias and such. For IT workers most of these resources are online in forums, knowledgebases and web searches. Online resources required online access which requires a functional device, preferably a computer.

    In the old days (before effective remotes) we would have to leave a misbehaving device to find a working device to do our research on then return to the original device. If our research provided us with the correct solution the first time around (a rare thing) then we were all set. Most often however, we would have to make several trips back and forth.

    Today, using a remote control, we can simultaneously remote a misbehaving terminal and research a solution from the same computer. Usually, one configured and setup just the way we like it (no one really enjoys using a computer littered with pictures of someone else’s family—or worse, cat—their Facebook and whatever odd sites they deemed worthy to bookmark). This research method maintain efficiency and when business computers are down, efficiency is key. Few businesses have a bevy of spare devices; often every hour a device is down is an hour of work lost which will need to be made up later, frequently on overtime.

    All of this is to say that remote control work is a very, very good thing for IT workers (who can work faster and more efficiently), businesses (who experience less downtime and resource waste) and end users (who experience less frustration, and quicker response and resolution to issues).

    Sometimes, however, things go so wrong that remote controls do not work and correction requires onsite work. Personally, I cringe every time this happens. Most other IT workers do to. Partly because we lose our precious efficiency but mostly because of the business equivalent to Mr. Jones: users who swarm the poor onsite IT worker.

    On occasion, these delays are good and the users provide new and valuable information. These occasion are very rare. Instead, most swarms include peppering the IT worker with information they already have, regaling them with stories of their system going down and all the things they tried to bring the system back and how sad they are that things are not working correctly and… Honestly, most of this information is useless and, perchance it is not, a good IT worker will be able to quickly gather the relevant information they need to understand what is happening.

    Do not be surprised if the IT worker does not ask you any questions though. Why? Because he already knows that something is wrong. For one, someone already called to complain. For two, if he could have remoted in, he would have. For three, IT workers are part doctor and part animal trainer: they can often tell what is wrong by listening to the whining machines and by poking around a bit. Like a sick wildebeest, servers are better at explaining their woes than the user who cannot get them to work.

    Be very wary of the worst offence of all: trying to get the IT worker to look at something else. Unless he is just strolling through looking for work, he is probably headed somewhere to do something that was important enough that he could not do it remotely. Your belaying him causes two problems. He is not getting to what he had already promised to do and there is probably a server somewhere collapsed on the floor, bleeding out while you are whining about a slow email connection. The second is that he is going to struggle to remember your problem. IT workers are humans too, we can only remember so many things at once and your problem is probably not important enough to remember in the face of some other dire situation.

    So the next time you spot an IT worker or catch them on the phone: wave, say ‘hi’ and ‘thank you,’ offer them a drink and get them quickly on their way. Oh, and send them an email about that annoying little problem you only remember when you see them. They will be grateful and probably be much more cheery when it comes to helping you in the future.

  • An Analysis for Transition from Spreadsheets to Fusion Tables, part 3

    This is part of a multipart post taken from my essay entitled “An Analysis for Transition from Spreadsheets to Fusion Tables”. It may sound boring, but a questioning reader may find it rather useful to understand the value of Google Sheets and Google Fusion Tables in the workplace and readers may also find additional ideas for improving their usage of either product.

    Costing Evolution

    While Fusion Tables promises much in the way of streamlining operations and improving managed data sharing, it is not without some drawbacks. Even when entering the Promised Land, some of the wonders of Egypt had to be left behind.

    Return to Structure

    To start with, Fusion system would be a return to the database structure abandoned by Company data. While column changes would still be possible, they would be more difficult than currently supported (but still much easier the previously). Further, Views and data merges are non-additive. Once they have been completed columns can be removed but no new ones—or old ones, including one previously removed—can be added. To accomplish addition requires building a new merge or View (unless introducing a completely new data set). Because of this, it is likely to take several attempts to get the proper blend of data. Removing old attempts will invalidate links and bookmarks requiring them to be updated.

    Lack of Presence

    Those “feel good” social markers (namely the cell highlights) are completely absent from Fusion Tables. In fact, working on a Fusion Table is a bit like working in a black hole: there is no indication that any other user has a Fusion Table open let alone where they are working. The only indication that one is not working alone is if data changes after a browser refresh.

    Stale Data

    There is no real-time updating. All updates to a Fusion Table happen on refresh. This can increase the chances of overlapping work, duplicate data entry or functioning on old data.

    More Data, Less Interpretation

    Fusion Tables does not permit anything near the robust formulas of a spreadsheet. While they permit basic math and a few other limited functions, if/then and other comparative functions are limited at best but are frequently missing entirely. Useful features like links to clients folder based on online enrollment suddenly become impossible.

    While it is possible, and even likely, that more powerful functions will be added as Fusion Tables continue to develop, they are not available now. The same is true for our conditional formatting. This shifts some of the analysis that Company data does automatically back to the user. Missing information will blend in with complete information, poor ratings will sit quietly beside good ones and words will go back to being just a number relying of the user to remember what the values mean. These issues can be migrated with concerted training but it is less elegant to have to track such drab details manually.

    No Printing

    Perhaps one of the most glaringly absent features is an inability to print. None of the data sets, Views or reports can be printed. Instead, they are locked securely in their digital existence. The nearest ability to print them is to export them and print from the exportation.

    Dismissal of Menus

    Currently, Fusion Tables lacks the ability to be scripted with custom menus. This means that running custom scripts will no longer be as simple as going to the Scripts menu and telling it to run. In fairness, this will only effect two scripts that were tied directly to Company data directly and thus should not be considered a major concern.

  • An Analysis for Transition from Spreadsheets to Fusion Tables, part 2

    This is part of a multipart post taken from my essay entitled “An Analysis for Transition from Spreadsheets to Fusion Tables”. It may sound boring, but a questioning reader may find it rather useful to understand the value of Google Sheets and Google Fusion Tables in the workplace and readers may also find additional ideas for improving their usage of either product.

    The Promises of Fusion

    Some number of months ago, Google released a new product, Fusion Tables, to the public. While Fusion Tables are designed to handle large amount of data, they present a compelling opportunity for evolution to the Ecosystem. Such progression, however, does not come without some sacrifice.

    Fusion Tables represent a return to the database format we had originally abandoned when creating the Ecosystem, but with some twists. With an eager excitement I began a new project called “Fusion system”, a functional prototype of our Company data spreadsheet converted to a set of Fusion Tables, to test out the potential of this new system. Adoption of Fusion system would not mean throwing out all of our spreadsheets, just converting our largest, most complicated spreadsheet into a Fusion Table. The rest of the Ecosystem would remain the same.

    Custom Data Combination

    One of the biggest benefits of the Fusion Tables is the ability to easily combine data across different tables without having to permanently combine the data. In fact, temporary “joins” as they are called in database jargon, are part of the Fusion Table backbone. It allows for almost endless, non-destructive data merging. This, in conjunction with what we smart data propagation, makes it advantageous to segregate data into logical groupings rather than a large conglomerate as we did with Company data because relevant data can be pulled and combined whenever desired for an enhanced view and, unlike importRange, this is accomplished more reliably.

    Data Propagation

    Data, no matter where it was originally stored, where it ends up being presented or with what other data it ends up being merged, always remains editable. More importantly, changes to data—again, without regard to where and what—are propagated throughout all iterations of the data so that wherever the data is presented, it is always the newest revision.

    This ability for universal editing means that there would be no reservation in creating customized data sets because there would be no break in the data being viewed. In theory, each user could have a set of tables that have been tailored for efficiency in their specific task. This is vast improvement over our current spreadsheet that enable one-way transmission of data (they can read data from other sheets but cannot push edits back).

    Record Editing

    Fusion Tables have a built in record editing mechanism that we have not been able to mimic with satisfactory reliability in the Company data. Moreover, this edit mechanism adapts to the columns presented in the current view of the data. That is, users are always presented with an editing screen that matches the current table.

    This improved presentation of editing help to ensure that data is only intentionally edited as the editing mode must be expressly entered (instead of simply typing over existing data) and prevents users from unknowingly switching their editing to a different row.

    Filtering

    Fusion Tables presents a simplified data filtration system that makes it easier to restrict the current data view based on any number of criteria. While the Fusion Table filtering is not as robust as that found in Sheets, it is more suitable for our purposes.

    Custom Presentations

    While Fusion Tables focuses on managing large data sets, it is also built to present the data with great flexibility. To this end, the system has a built in ability to present the data in many different ways including rows and cards. Rows are essentially echoes of the original table but cards allow for an almost endless customization of the data presentation. Using simplified HTML tags for the layout, cards permit users to quickly build templates for how the data will be presented. The presentation engine is not the most feature rich; still it enables basic reporting on a level that is extremely difficult within a spreadsheet all with ease.

    Limited Views

    Views, as they are called in Fusion Tables, are custom built representations of data sets. They can be crafted from a single table or several tables, they can include custom filters or present full data sets. Of most interest, however, is that once a View has been created and shared it is locked in. That is, the filters and tables connected to the View cannot be altered. All of the previously mentioned features are still available: the View will always show the most recent data and, if editing is allowed, will pass data edits back to the original data set. This is particularly useful in solving the problem of presenting each client with the most current data while not having to manage separate data stores and, at the same time, keeping other clients’ data protected.

    An additional use of Views is in considering parent/child relationships. For example, some clients need access to information from several other clients by way of leasing agreement but the leasing clients should not have access to other leasing client data. Using Fusion Tables we can provide a View for the Lessor client that includes all the leasing client while providing individual leasing clients with Views of only their own data. This process would not require any additional data entries or any extra data updates. All data would be current and protected.

    Improved Reporting

    It would be wrong to say that Fusion Table will represent vastly improved external reporting (i.e. reports generated for email or print). Instead, reporting will go much the same as it has before, just run a little faster. Currently, entire data sets are reviewed in the process of finding the relevant information; scripts compare, line by line, data against a series of criterion. Fusion Tables uses an SQL like query methodology which means instead of importing a whole data set and then sifting through it to find the few relevant lines we can simply request the data that matching a given criterion and dispense with the sifting entirely.